Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin summarizes the latest research into the neurological effects of so-called multitasking in a world where email, Facebook and instant messaging demand our attention more or less constantly.

There are 2 million people surveilling Internet usage in China, half a million more than are safeguarding the country in its army; memory’s fallibility is a good thing, according to some neuroscientists; meanwhile, the Fukushima disaster is enough evidence that all nuclear plants should be shut down. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The same administration that brought you the “Disposition Matrix”—a blueprint for tracking, capturing or killing alleged terrorism suspects—is investing in a decade-long effort to build a comprehensive map of the human brain.

In the course of writing her new book, “Vagina: A New Biography,” author and activist Naomi Wolf discovered research in neuroscience that strongly suggests that “the vagina is not just a sex organ at all, but a powerful mediator of female confidence, creativity and the sense of the connections between things.”

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, believes intuition—not reason—guides people’s behavior, and with his new book, “The Righteous Mind,” he wants to teach you how to better sell your politics.

While studying the relationship between stress and alcohol in fruit flies, a group of neuroscientists found that sexually frustrated male flies were more likely to prefer food spiked with alcohol than their carnally satisfied peers, suggesting that humans aren’t the only species to self-medicate.

What accounts for our species’ self-consciousness and awareness of our mortality, for our impulses to create art, to cling to our memories of childhood, to believe in a deity? Two new books suggest distinct approaches to such elemental questions.

Increasingly chaotic weather, potentially habitable planets and closing in on the elusive Higgs boson are just a few of the developments observed and discoveries made by the scientific community in 2011. The editors at LiveScience asked university scientists to describe what they think were the most important advances of the year.

While the Obama administration has spoken up for gay rights, it has yet to support gay marriage; Kevin Spacey has been heckling noisy audience members in his role as Richard III; meanwhile, L.A. and Occupy L.A. have come to a similar consensus about corporate personhood: It needs to go! These discoveries and more after the jump.

How’s this for a mental image? In an effort to make our synapses sexier to the general public, one enterprising neuroscience aficionado and Ph.D.-to-be cooked up a book of pretty pictures of the human brain as rendered from past to present.

It’s an age-old complaint, at least judging by the highly scientific content found in women’s magazines: Men just aren’t snuggly enough and, what’s more, they don’t empathize enough either. Hmph! But a hormone-laced nasal spray might change all that for the better.

How about a little cognitive psychology with your English literature? Professors who normally spend their time thinking about Virginia Woolf’s characters and story structures are taking a page from scientific texts to add a new dimension to their exploration of fiction.

Those who have ever suspected, after apparently taking leave of their reason in the face of their favorite junk food, that their guilt-inducing pleasure contained some highly addictive substance may not be too far off the mark, according to a new study.

Everyone’s going nuts for functional MRI in research circles these days, it seems. Why, a bunch of wacky neuroscientists from Dartmouth College have even used the technology to study what happens when we humans find something funny.

Schizophrenia is one of the most baffling of mental illnesses, but a group of scientists studying the phenomenon in Austria may have hit upon a significant discovery that could help young potential schizophrenics prevent the onset of full-blown psychosis, and the treatment comes in a familiar form: fish oil supplements.